It amuses me to collect 2-step “strategies” for getting rich. One of the first I found is:
1. Convince Microsoft you’re a competitor.
2. Accept their buyout offer.
That’s one of my favorites. The one I plan to talk about today, though, is:
1. Create a controversy.
2. Cash in.
This has a few advantages over the Microsoft-sell-out strategy, not the least of which is that you don’t have to include the phrase “sell out” in the description. Also high on the list is the lesson of Netscape: If you convince Microsoft too well, they’ll just crush you and then you get nothing except bragging rights (which are nowhere near as “priceless” as, say, a house overlooking the lagoon on your own private island).
Unconvinced about the controversy strategy? Here are some examples drawn from history:
“Lady Marmalade” by Labelle – When originally released, the song about a New Orleans prostitute didn’t make much of a wave. And then people found out it was a song about a prostitute. Must’ve been a slow news year. In any case, the fundamentalist Christians raised a stink, and suddenly the song is topping the charts. “Gitchya gitchya ya ya da da” indeed.
“Dungeons & Dragons” by TSR (now Wizards of the Coast) – An obscure game played by even more obscure geeks and Tolkien fans. Slap a demon on the cover of the Dungeon Masters Guide (a good, strong name just reeking with potential controversy) and before you can say, “I need a to-hit roll” or “What’s my THAC0 again?” Boom! Sales go as berserk as the demon-hunting, book-burning fundamentalists.
“Grand Theft Auto 3″ by Rockstar Games – Blah blah blah pissed off the fundamentalists blah blah blah sales go through the roof.
In fact, now that I think about it, let’s revise the strategy a bit:
1. Create a product that offends fundamentalists (of any major religion).
2. Cash in.
It’s almost guaranteed.
You don’t think “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” got popular because it helped guys dress better, do you? Oh, you do. You’re adorable. And of course, there’s also the Beatles (“We’re bigger than Jesus!”) and Harry Potter(“Expelliarmus!”). Controversy didn’t create them, but it sure didn’t hurt sales any.
You have to be careful with this strategy, though. You can take it too far. The uproar over D&D left the game with a taint that it still hasn’t shaken, even after TSR crashed and burned and WOTC released D&D 3rd Edition (and now 3.5). The furor over GTA3 started a new wave of ill-conceived anti-game, protect-the-children legislation. And Missy Elliot remade “Lady Marmalade” in 2001 for the movie “Moulin Rouge”. Truly tragic.
So how do you take advantage of this strategy?
If you think I’m going to say “First, you need a controversy”…well…you’re wrong. Go to the back of the class.
The first thing you need, the most important thing you need, is something to sell. Whether it’s a song, a game, a book, a movie, a TV show, whatever, you have to have that first. Why? Review step 2 above: “Cash in.” How do you plan to cash in without something to swap for the cash?
Let’s say you create the uproar before you have something to sell. What do you get? Some news coverage, maybe, a few letters to the editor describing your pitiful upbringing and table manners. And that’s about it. Can you leverage those for profit? Sure, but the standard 15 minutes of fame ticks by pretty fast if all you have to offer is…well…you.
So you have a product. Good. Now you just need something in the product that is bound to not just offend somebody, but prod them to take that extra step and try to Stamp You Out.
Make sure you don’t do anything illegal, but never forget that “immoral” has a much fuzzier definition (and usually doesn’t entail prison terms). Challenge their beliefs. Threaten to corrupt the young. Specifically, their young. Make them see life the way it really is and not the way they’ve been trying to pretend it is. They’ll never forgive you for that one.
And so on.
With your product ready to go, and your Web page setup to take credit cards, you’ll be handing over the down payment on your private island within weeks.
In his last Op-ed column for the New York Times, pundit William Safire, had this to say:
“The Nobel laureate James Watson, who started a revolution in science as co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, put it to me straight a couple of years ago: ‘Never retire. Your brain needs exercise or it will atrophy.’
“…retraining and fresh stimulation are what all of us should require in ‘the last of life, for which the first was made.’ Athletes and dancers deal with the need to retrain in their 30’s, workers in their 40’s, managers in their 50’s, politicians in their 60’s, academics and media biggies in their 70’s. The trick is to start early in our careers the stress-relieving avocation that we will need later as a mind-exercising final vocation. We can quit a job, but we quit fresh involvement at our mental peril.
“…Medical and genetic science will surely stretch our life spans. Neuroscience will just as certainly make possible the mental agility of the aging. Nobody should fail to capitalize on the physical and mental gifts to come.
“…When you’re through changing, learning, working to stay involved – only then are you through. ‘Never retire.’ “
I’m in my mid-30’s now, but I long ago decided that what used to pass for “retirement” (i.e., lots of golf and/or porch-sitting) wasn’t for me.
At my first post-college job I worked with a man who had retired from the US Navy only a few years before. In his mid-40’s at the time, he had launched a whole new career for himself in networking and computers. That made me realize how different the world had become. Here I was, 22 years old. In 20 years, which is considered a good, long career, I would be only 42. And 20 years after that, only 62. I saw that I could reasonably have 3 completely different, and possibly completely unrelated, careers. (Since then, BTW, my former co-worker has changed careers again to become an author of young adult novels.)
With that long future in front of me, it suddenly seemed obvious: Who needs retirement? So long as you’re doing what you want/love/choose, why stop?
This is the Information Age, and few of us have jobs that are as physically demanding as those of our grandparents. So long as you keep your information up-to-date, you’re good to go.
According to another friend, I’ve already retired. He sets my retirement date on 12 March 1999, the day I quit my full-time job and became a full-time indie. Or, as he tells it, the day I “quit and went home.” He defines retirement as the time when you get to do what you want to do. So, to him, I’m already retired. I try to tell him how much work I do each day, but he waves it aside. “If it’s work you want to do, it’s not really work.”
Maybe this is the Indie Retirement Plan: Never quit. If you ever get tried of being one type of indie, just find some other independent thing you can do.
Create a sense of place…”here is where I work”…use music or other indicators as the cue that “I’m working now.”
The key here is to only use this thing when you’re actually doing work. You don’t need to do it every time you work, but you should only use it when you’re working. You can use one of those scent things, or a nature sounds CD if you’re afraid music would be too distracting. When you’re in a state of Flow, or know you’re about to start doing some real work, turn it on. Then the next time you want to work, you can simply turn this on, and it will turn you on.
Strive for a sense of “flow”.
Variety
Appropriate and flexible challenges
Clear goals
Immediate feedback
A sense that one’s skills are adequate to cope with the challenges at hand.
A rule-bound action system
This is what the ideal job looks like. This job will resemble play, and will be addictive. As much as you can create work like this, you will be a happy person. As much as you can make your work like this, you will want to do it.
“Procrastination is the reward for not doing work.”
Well, what would Nanny 911 do? She would take away everything you use to procrastinate, and not give it back until you finished your work. No exceptions, because an exception is a random reinforcer.
There are 3 types of procrastination: “events that come to you”, “things that depend on outside objects, but that you initiate”, and “purely internal events, just zoning out and daydreaming”. You should “change your environment to get rid of the distraction”.
If you study people while they’re working, you’ll find that a single behavior or set of behaviors predict when you’re about to procrastinate. These are like poker tells. Unconscious twitches that signal you’re about to stop working. If you can figure out what these behaviors are and remind yourself to get back to work whenever it happens, you can stop the interruptions.
posted on Filmmaker, The Magazine of Independent Film.
One topic Graham Leggat’s Game Engine column in Filmmaker regularly returns to is the rise of “independent gaming” in the videogame world. Just as independent filmmakers reacted against studio monoliths in the ’80s to start a new wave of indie production, there is now a slowly emerging groundswell of developers doing something similar in the world of videogaming.
I came to realize that all of these have their answers hinged on the question of why. Why distribute? Why test? Why polish? The answers to these, in turn, revolve around one central question: why write?
I think the post provides an insightful look at the motivations all indies start with and pass through.
I know in my own case, whatever motivation I start with, there comes a point when the only reason I keep working on a project is: Because I want to.
The danger then is if I lose the “want to”. Sometimes I can rediscover it by simply reviewing what I’ve done up to that point. If I can look at it and say, “This is good stuff…” or even “This doesn’t suck…” then there’s a chance of moving forward again. Without that, it’s dead. All it lacks is a tombstone. It might come back again, of course, after I achieve some emotional distance. But for the immediate future: flatline. Call the coroner and find a caterer for the wake.
When most newly minted business owners look at their monthly and yearly profits and decide to improve them, they usually pick one of two main approaches:
1. Sell more copies.
2. Raise the per-copy price.
#1 sounds great, but is hard to plan for. For many of us, having no significant marketing budget and only such sales skills as we’ve scraped together over our time as indies, “sell more copies” seems less like an action item and more of a Holy Grail-type quest. Often, the best we can do is ratchet up sales to the next increment: from 1/day to 100/month, from 100/month to 200/month, and so on.
#2 has its appeal, as well, and should be investigated, or at least considered, once a year. Raising your price involves certain risks, though, and you may not be in a position where you can easily take the time to properly test and rollout the new price point.
There is another way to increase profits, though:
3. Reduce your costs.
Your cost-per-sale determines your profit margin, since your profit is defined as “sale price minus costs”.
Your costs are your overhead. They are the drag on your revenue stream. So it’s in your best interest to a) know exactly what your costs-per-sale are; and b) regularly look for ways to reduce or eliminate them.
Which costs should you try to reduce? All of them!
Here’s a list of costs that most of us have to deal with every month:
Payment processor transactions fees
Web site hosting fees
Bandwidth fees
Advertising
Internet connectivity
I’m an indie and I work from home, so I’ve already eliminated such costs as:
Office space rental, utilities, etc.
Employees
And so on.
Many times, we find a solution (hopefully the best solution at the time given available options and resources) and we stick with it year after year. However, as our business grows, and as the business environment changes, what might have been the best solution then is far from being the best solution now.
For example, if you, like us, had setup a small, multiplayer game in the late 1990’s, your hosting fees and bandwidth charges would look astronomical compared to what is available today. If you never revisited the issue, but just kept paying what you had been paying from the beginning, today you would almost certainly paying 2X to 3X as much as you have to.
Sometimes you can rely on your suppliers to pass along savings to you. But not always. If providing a particular service has become cheaper, then you should renegotiate with your supplier–or find a new supplier.
The same applies to payment processing companies. What may have been the best deal at your game’s price point 2-3 years ago might no longer be the case. Many third-party payment processors have implemented much lower fees, especially at the low end of the price spectrum. Prices below $20 used to have inordinately high “minimum transaction fees” (e.g, $3-$4). That has changed. If you haven’t checked out what’s available in payment processors lately, I recommend you swing by RegShare (http://www.regshare.com) and give it a long, thoughtful look.
For my non-game product, The Journal, I discovered that I could save *thousands* of dollars over the course of this year by changing to a new payment processor. Why? Because in the 2 years since the last time I changed processors (I saved a lot of money then too), new companies had been formed and new options created. My current processor has shown no signs of changing its business practices, so I’m going to change mine.
Advertising is a cost you should always have under scrutiny. Know how much you’re spending, and how much each dollar of that earns you in return. If the advertising dollars you send out aren’t coming back to you–with new friends in tow–then stop sending them out. Find a new advertising venue that does pay back.
To repeat, probably the simplest way to increase profits is:
Know your costs.
Work to reduce them.
There are always options available for most goods and services, and you should take the time to consider them on a regular basis. I would recommend that at least once per year you review how much it’s costing you to do business, and see what you can do to bring that cost down.
“In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun and – SNAP – the job’s a game.” –Mary Poppins
I think that goes well with my 31 December post’s conclusion (and hardly original quote): “If you aren’t having fun, you aren’t doing it right.”
This week I’ve also been reflecting on the need to relax.
Because sometimes, to realign Ms. Poppins quote, the game is a job.
Sure, it all started as fun and games. But even though no one’s put an eye out (so far), the fun and the game seem to have split and are now on opposite sides of the room, refusing to cooperate or even talk to each other. What started with excitement and a bright vision of the future has become a dark dystopia, grinding you down like a slavedriver with a sore tooth and need to share his pain–with you.
It’s too late to stop now, though. You signed the contract, you announced the project, and now it’s get it done…or suffer the consequences.
Somehow, the whole thing shifted from “Look what I get to do!” to “Damn-damn damn-damn-damn.” And it wasn’t a pleasant shift. Nor does it look like a pleasant way to spend the next weeks or months as you Get It Done.
So what can you do?
If Mary Poppins drifted in on her umbrella and jauntily told you to, “Look for the fun.” Chances are good that something would SNAP.
So I’m taking a slightly different tack: Take the time to relax first. Then look for (remember) the fun. And then, finally, it might not be a “snap”, but you can begin to recover your enthusiasm.
Really.
Relaxing is good for you. If there’s something you have to do, and you’re not looking forward to it, or if you’re worried about doing it wrong, you make it worse for yourself by tensing up. When you get tense, you lose flexibility, and you tend to either overreact to the unexpected or just freeze up. Neither of those is very helpful.
Long years ago, as a teenager, I read “Psycho-Cybernetics”, by Maxwell Maltz (the original 1960’s version, not the so-called updated version from the 1990’s). One of the passages that always stuck with me had to do with the power of being relaxed. When you’re relaxed, you can observe and, if you choose, respond to whatever happens. Being relaxed, you’re ready for anything and can choose to do anything. When you tense up, you tire your muscles and your mind while you limit your possibilities.
I heard this advice again in martial arts training. When you tense up, you give away what you’re expecting your opponent to do, and what you’re about to do. Be ready, yes, but be relaxed.
Are tasks, like developing a game (or writing a book), opponents? I assure you, they can be.
Even if it’s something you enjoy doing, if there’s too much pressure on you, you can find yourself tensing up and dreading the task. So you put it off. But that only adds more pressure, and gets you more worked up. Maybe you try to work on it, but it’s like pulling teeth–your own teeth, with no anesthetic. Agony every step of the way.
Here is something you like doing, something you want to do, but for some reason you’re fighting yourself.
Often, the only way to break the cycle and regain control of the situation is to do the one thing that seems impossible: Relax.
Take a deep breath, and let it out slow. Get as “loose” as you can physically. You’ll be surprised how it can help you loosen up mentally too. There are all sorts of relaxation techniques, and most don’t require either chanting or contortion. Chances are you already know how to help yourself relax. Don’t put it off. Do it (undo it?) now.
Once you’ve relaxed, accept things as they are right now. No guilt. No blame. No excuses. Then you can see clearly and think clearly, and not only see what needs to be done, but remember why you started in the first place–the fun part.
And that’s why we’re here: The fun part.
So, if you know you have to do something, and for whatever reason the “have to” (internal or external) is grinding you down, take the time to:
I’m currently involved in a project that I would like to remove myself from.
Unfortunately, the only way to do that is to Just Get It Finished. Gotta love legally binding contracts.
It Wasn’t Always Thus
I didn’t always dislike this contract (it’s a book, BTW). In fact, when I pitched the book proposal to publishers in the summer of 2004, it was because it fit my goals:
I wanted to write another game development book.
I wanted to write a book that would be useful to independent game developers, and could, therefore, be reasonably bundled with my earlier book, The Indie Game Development Survival Guide.
I wanted to write a book that could be leveraged for further speaking gigs[*].
I wanted a quick project that included at least some upfront payment[**].
All of those goals still apply, but my enthusiasm for the project has somewhat waned. Why? Various reasons, many of which boil down to one of these two:
Fear that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew; and
The urge to focus my energies in other directions (e.g., new game projects, new fiction projects, marketing The Journal 4).
#1 is reasonable for any project that stretches your limits. #2 just shows that I’m susceptible to attention span deficit disorder in the face of #1.
Currently, I’m almost to the point of being behind on this project. Not quite, but almost. I’ve mapped out the production level (in terms of words per day) that I need to hit in order to make my next milestone. And it’s not undoable. In fact, I’ve done it before, so I know it’s doable.
But, knowing myself the way I do, and how I tend to behave when enthusiasm fades, I worry that I might let myself slide. I might coast, and not hit my daily quotas and just generally give it the old “So who really cares if I don’t finish the damn book?”
For example, just this past week, on Tuesday, I wrote 1000 words on the book…and then over 4000 words on a comlete short story that I hadn’t even considered until that very day. I haven’t started (or finished) a short story in almost a decade. Everyone needs to let off some creative steam on occasion, but damn… And yesterday I spent about 4-6 hours fixing a problem in The Journal that exactly 1 (one) user had complained about. Just so you know how far off track I can go when I really don’t want to think about something else: It involved deciphering the RTF specification, and how embedded OLE objects are encoded within it. (Shudder.) (I fixed that problem, BTW, so unless I get my act together, I might spend ridiculous number of hours next week doing who knows what…like cleaning the bathroom, clipping my fingernails, installing rain gutters; anything but the book.)
So…what’s my plan?
My plan is to start my work each day by spending 5-10 minutes writing out what I like about this book I’m writing:
How it still fits my personal and professional goals.
How it will be helpful to independent game developers (both definitions of “indie”: not-owned-by-a-publisher and trying-not-to-starve).
How it will be well-received.
How much I will enjoy spending the next installment of the advance payment.
And so on.
Why? Because I think that a large part of my problem is that over the last month or so I have spent far too much time and energy focusing on what I don’t like about the project. And that hasn’t helped. Not even a little bit.
I know myself. I know how I work. And if I don’t like what I’m working on, I have a very real tendency to not work on it. I can’t force myself. I can’t “guilt” myself into it. And despite what I said earlier, I can’t be forced by a contract. If it came to that, I’d pay back the advance and call it quits.
The thing is: I don’t want to abandon this project. I want to finish it. And I know that I can.
I have to Just Do It.
But to Just Do It, I know that I have to WANT TO.
So my plan this week is to rediscover my WANT TO.
As much as I can, I will focus only on the reasons why I started the project, and why I want to complete it. If I find myself listing out the reasons I don’t want to work on the project, I’ll pause and do another 5-10 minutes of “Yea, you do!” pep talk, and carry on from there.
Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? Here’s hoping.
-Joe
[*] Free travel with opportunities to speak your mind…yah…they’re cool. So far, I’ve spoken at the Indie Games Con (2002-2004), Free Play in Melbourne, Australia (2004), and at the Singapore Science Centre (2004). I even did a presentation at my alma mater. I still need to land a GDC gig, though. And then there’s Europe. Always wanted to go to Europe.
[**] This is one advantage of non-fiction books vs fiction books: With non-fiction, you can get paid before you write the book. In fiction, this perk is reserved for the established (i.e., proven profitable) writers.
A rhetorical question that has given philosophers something to talk about for eons.
Think it doesn’t apply to your game? Think again.
Here’s another, less rhetorical question:
“Would you play a game that consists of pressing a single button, and sometimes a bell goes off?”
No?
Hundreds of thousands of people do, every day. Usually in casinos, and the button is a lever, but that’s about the sum total of “gameplay” in a slot machine. Some people go to casinos for the sole purpose of playing the slots. A game that requires no skill, and is designed to take more from you than you put in. Why do they play? In a word: context.
You probably thought I was going to say “money.” Bzzzzt. Money is the incentive to enter the context of the slot machine, yes. But the context is the casino itself. And in this case, the context provides the hope (the slimmest hope) that if they play the game they could win big money.
If you’re like me, you’re probably in no position to offer money as an incentive to play your game. But maybe-you’ll-win-money isn’t the only context available. Actually, I know it isn’t.
Call it “high concept”. Call it “backstory”. Call it the “hook”. Whatever you want to call it, your game needs it.
In a very real sense, the concept of your game is your competitive differentiation.
A couple of recent threads on the Indiegamer Developer Forums have commented on the popularity of chickens (and other farm animals) and discussed the importance of character development in independent games. These are both aspects of “game concept”.
Your game’s concept answers two very important questions:
Why bother (playing this game)?
What is my purpose (within the game)?
Let’s face it, no particular gameplay mechanic, no matter how “innovative” or original, is going to make a difference to the player if they a) don’t get into your game, or b) don’t know what to do once they get there.
The faster a player can grasp the concept of your game and understand what is expected of him within the game, the better. Don’t leave the player guessing. Because if you do, he’ll just leave.
So:
Pick a concept that can be summed up in as few words as possible, and that will be understood by as many people as possible.
Example: ”In deep space, your salvage team has run across a derelict starship with the seemingly mis-chosen name of “The Dire Circumstances”. Their loss, your gain. There’s only one minor problem. It’s teeming with aliens!” (from Derelict, by Laughing Dragon Games)
Pick a title for your game that provides a lot of information about the game in the fastest, snappiest way possible. I heard a comic once say he liked “movie titles that give me a little movie in my head as soon as I hear it.” That should go for game names too.
Let the player know what’s expected of him as soon as he starts the game. If it’s not immediately obvious, hold the player’s hand a bit. Tell him what’s needed.
I think all of the examples I give demonstrate all of the points I’m trying to make.
On the other hand, I know I’m hardly perfect when it comes to these points. I would say that Artifact fails #2 completely and barely scrapes by on #3. Inkling fails #1 and #2 but does a good job with #3. Paintball Net (may it Rest in Peace), however, hammered #1 and #2 and (if we’d finished it) wouldn’t have many problems with #3.
So look at this article as my sharing what I’ve learned from making mistakes. J
Be innovative. Be original. But while you’re at it, don’t forget to also: Be clear. Be accessible.
